


Resurrect the Art of Allag (Reverse the Curse of Amon)

by 0bsidianFire



Series: Static Tuned in to Reason [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Austerities of Flame, Consequences, Curiosity, Gen, Magic experiments, Nerdiness, Summoner - Freeform, Theorycrafting, Worldbuilding, soul stones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-11 00:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13513278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bsidianFire/pseuds/0bsidianFire
Summary: All legends start somewhere. Kharagal's starts with a letter from her guild-mistress, a meeting with one of the Sons of Saint Coinach and a five thousand-year-old soul stone. And a curiosity that's likely on par with the Allagan's.That might come back to bite her sooner rather then later. At least life is never boring...





	1. The Soul Stone

**Author's Note:**

> How the Lvl. 30 Summoner quest went for my WoL. And the unorthodox application of it afterwards.
> 
> The great part about writing FFXIV fan-fiction is that I can personalize my WoL's conversations. The not-so-great part is that my WoL is a total nerd and thinks good conversations mean swapping info dumps with people. Given that most of the people she talks with are also nerds, they're pretty okay with that.

After everything that happened due to helping kill Ifrit, Kharagal was more then happy to get interrupted by a Post-Moogle with a letter from Thubyrgeim asking her to come back to the Arcanists' Guild to discus something. For better or for worse, taking part in killing a primal meant people knew who Kharagal was now and that came with complications. The complications ran from people wondering if she was half-Amalj'aa to wondering if it was possible to catch the diseases that Bio mimicked. Kharagal supposed none of them had put together that the Arcanists' Guild was in a major port city and that if Bio did spread like a normal disease, it wouldn't be a spell the Guild would teach novice mages, if at all. And if Bane was something she forgot to mention, well, no one really had to know.

It didn't help that the people with the Echo had to stay in Ul'dah to fill in the Immortal Flames on what happened with Ifrit. It had been over a week since Ifrit had been banished and Kharagal was starting to go a bit stir-crazy. For the first twenty-odd years of her life, Kharagal had wandered a desert where walls were temporary tents that could easily be torn down when needed. Ul'dah's walls were thick stone and from what Kharagal could gather, had been designed to keep people both in and out of the city. Any excuse to leave Ul'dah for Limsa Lominsa was welcome.

The Arcanists' Guild was it's usual busy self when Kharagal got there; the main level was over-viewing cargo manifests, while the bottom floor echoed with Ruin blasts. On both floors, carbuncles of various colors were lying anywhere they could find a free spot.

Thubyrgeim was on the bottom floor overseeing novice arcanists casting Ruin spells. Kharagal walked over to her and watched beside her for a few minutes. Thubyrgeim smiled at her. "I remember when you first came here, Kharagal; you were fresh off a ship from the Far East and while you had one of the finest heads for geometry I have seen, your spell-book optimization needed some work."

Kharagal laughed. "In my defense, I didn't find out books existed until I was already considered a good mage. It was a lot to get used too."

Thubyrgeim nodded. "Even so, I'm happy I could be the one to teach you how to flip pages and use a quill correctly."

"And I will always be grateful for it; quills handle very differently then brushes do." Both women laughed at that.

"Reminiscing aside," Thubyrgeim said, "an intriguing matter has come up. The Sons of Saint Coinach have asked our guild to pass along a message to you or Kukunji specifically. It appears that their research is in need of an arcanist, specifically one that has defeated the primal Ifrit and not been tempered."

"The Sons of Saint Coinach? Who are they?" Kharagal frowned. Those requirements were very specific. "And why was it me you asked for and not Kukunji?"

"They are some of the finest minds in Eorzea and if the rumors are to be believed are of Sharlayan origin. From what I understand, they are specifically interested in the study of ancient Allag." Thubyrgeim shrugged. "As for why I asked for you... Kukunji is busy with a project with the Muraders' Guild. Something about the Nymian ruins."

 _Allag. The empire that created Dalamud..._ Whoever these scholars were, they would probably have more information on what Dalamud was. Or what was in it. "Who do they want me to get in contact with?"

"Y'mhitra, one of their researchers, is stationed in Grindania. She is the one who asked for you."

"I see," Kharagal smiled at Thubyrgeim. "Thanks for passing on the word. I'll have to tell you how it goes."

"I am sure you will. I am highly interested in what research the Sharlayans want to conduct with you. They--" She was interrupted by the sound of a Ruin blast that had imploded instead of exploded. Thubyrgeim turned to correct the caster's technique and waved good-bye to Kharagal. Kharagal waved back and walked up the stairs.

* * *

According to Mother Miounne, Y'mhitra liked to spend time around Apkallu Falls. Kharagal found the miqo'te lying on a bench in front of the falls with a book spread out before her and a wand lying next to her. "Y'mhitra?" she asked, "I was told-."

"Ah yes," Y'mhitra said and looked up from her book. "Kharagal Mierqid, I assume? Thank you for coming and yes, I am she. Please, sit down. I think we will be here a while."

Kharagal sat on a bench across from Y'mhitra and got a good look at her. She blinked. Many of Y'mhitra's mannerisms were very familiar. "You wouldn't happen to be related to Y'shtola would you?" she blurted.

Y'mhitra giggled. "Half-sister," she confirmed. "Shtola focused on magic and I focused on archeology. Which is what actually brought my order, the Sons of Saint Coinach, to ask your help."

"I heard they studied the Allagan Empire. What would they need me for? I never even heard of the Allagans until I came to Eorzea." 

"Let me back up a bit before I get to that," Y'mhitra said and frowned. "It is true that you weren't here before the Calamity?" At Kharagal's nod, she continued. "Well, north of Thanalan is a region with a huge lake. That region is called Mor Dhona and it is very close to Carteanaeu. When the Calamity happened, Mor Dohna was hit hard and a lot of weird things happened there."

"And by weird are we talking the Burning Wall weird or Bronze Lake being drained weird?" Kharagal asked. Aether flash-crystallizing was weird on a very different level then the aftereffects of an earthquake.

"Ummm... a bit of both really." Y'mhitra shrugged. "On the one hand, the lake in Mor Dhona was partially drained which revealed a lot of Allagan ruins that had never been seen before. On the other... aether erupted out of the Lifestream from an aetherite crystal and a giant tower made out of crystal seemingly grew out of nowhere on the lakeshore. And we are pretty sure the tower is really an energy collector that is mentioned in a lot of Allagan texts."

Kharagal stared at her. "You're kidding."

"Nope!" Y'mhitra grinned. "The Sons managed to get to the ruins on the lakebed first and we have found a lot of things there even we have never read of in the Allagan texts we currently have."

"Like what?" Kharagal grinned too, Y'mhitra's glee was infections.

"Well, one thing we found was some very old texts which described a specific sect of Allagan mages known as "summoners"." Y'mhitral looked slyly at Kharagal. "Apparently these mages could siphon the essences of primals and manifest this stolen energy as a biddable ally known as an "egi"."

"But..." Kharagal started playing with her horn-ring out of habit. "How would someone get the essence of a primal and not be tempered? That's..."

"Yes," Y'mhitra nodded. "That is the sticking point. It seems that when a primal is defeated, its aetheric essence is released into whatever is in the immediate vicinity. And the Allagans learned how to take advantage of that."

"So, that's why you wanted me," Kharagal snickered. "You want to see if these techniques work the way they're supposed to."

Y'mhitra smiled at that. "Guilty. Given what the biggest threat to Eorzea currently is, research into the summoning arts is time well spent, no matter how dangerous some of my colleges think it could be. However, there is a reason I wanted to meet you or Kukunji in particular." Y'mhitra bit her lip. "Everyone knows the Allagans were more advanced then we can imagine. That is true for not just their technologies but also their magical arts. While the beginning techniques of summoning are rather simple, the advanced ones are not." Y'mhitra sighed. "To be honest, looking at those techniques reminded me of the time I got a look at the geometry some of the students back at the Studium were inventing. Only these are even more complicated and are spell geometries. Me and my colleges can read of the effects the spells produce, but none of us have the aether-control needed to even attempt casting them." She glanced at Kharagal. "To be bunt, what we really need is an arcanist who is willing to spend a lot of time learning an untested family of spell geometries in addition to someone who has defeated a primal."

Kharagal laughed. "You should have started with that, I'm always looking for more geometries to study."

"In that case, you can start with this!" Y'mhitra handed Kharagal a faceted green stone that looked like a shard of thick clear glass. "According to the texts we found, that is a Summoner's soul stone and it is needed for the most foundational of the Summoning arts."

Kharagal held up the soul stone to her eye. An isosceles triangle with a curved base was etched on one side. This close, she could see that throughout the stone was an almost invisible regular structure of what looked like hairline fractures. Only when Kharagal poked the stone with her aether, the fractures turned out to be as solid as the rest of the stone and tried to direct the aether that passed though them into some very odd shapes. Kharagal jerked her aether out of the stone with a start and found Y'mhitra looking at her. "Sorry, I just got--"

Y'mhitra giggled. "It's fine. All of us have poked it at least once, including myself. It would be weirder if you did not."

Kharagal smiled. "What were you saying before that?"

"The soul stone is needed for the most foundational summoning ritual, the ritual that creates an egi, called an Austerity. It seems the most important part of the Austerity is not the actual ritual itself, which is so simple it might not be considered a ritual at all, but rather the location the ritual is performed at." At Kharagal's raised eyebrow, Y'mhitra continued, "The texts say that the Austerity must be conducted in a land where the land's naturally dominant element matches that of the egi they wish to call forth. Fortunately for us, Ifrit's element is obviously that of fire and the Sagolii Desert has been known to be dominated by fire aspected aether since time immemorial. I figured the area west of Byregot's Strike would be the perfect place to do it."

Kharagal nodded. It made sense, except for a few major things. "Why does the land have to be the same element as the egi? and what does the summoner actually do?"

Y'mhitra sighed in frustration, though obviously not at Kharagal. "The answer to both those questions is one and the same. The summoner has to shift their aetheric balance as far as they can toward the element of the egi to manifest. Supposedly, the dominant element of the land helps them get a feel for what their aura should feel like when it is shifted far enough." Y'mhira looked at Kharagal. "Unfortunately, the particulars of how this is supposed to bring forth an egi is something we are missing information on. Most of us suspect that this is what the soul stone is needed for as the rest of the ritual does not depend on it."

"In other words, this is where the experiments start," said Kharagal with a grin and she got up from the bench and stretched. "I can't wait!"

"Neither can I," said Y'mhitra. "See you at Byregot's Strike in two weeks?"

Kharagal nodded. She could find some way to get out there. "That sound like it'll work, see you then!" The two woman said their farewells and Kharagal teleported back to Ul'dah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's probably a good thing the Summoner soul stone was discovered before anyone realized exactly how crazy the Allagans were...


	2. The Ritual

It turned out getting to Byregot's Strike went smoother then Kharagal thought it would. She asked the other people she had fought Ifrit with if they knew how to get there and got lucky. Osric Brasher, the Hyurian conjurer worked with caravan drivers that specialized in getting to out of the way places in Thanalan and was more then happy to give Kharagal advice and maps of the trade routes his caravans used in and around the Sagolii Desert. According to him, most routes that were making for Forgotten Springs went through The Red Labyrinth, a series of slot cannons west of Zanr'ak. Past Forgotten Springs, caravans only went to Byregot's Strike and very few even did that. There was nothing but desert between Forgotten Springs and Cape Deadwind and the cape hadn't been worth stopping at in years. He also cautioned Kharagal about how dry the Sagolii was and was relieved to find out Kharagal had gown up in a desert that was as bad as the Sagolii.

On chocobo-back, the trip out to Forgotten Springs took Kharagal a week even though it looked like it should take less time on a map. The Red Labyrinth was filled with switchbacks and looped back on itself constantly which greatly increased travel time. By the end of the second day, Kharagal longed for her yol which would have made a significant portion of the terrain a non-issue. Still, she was better off on her rented chocobo then the merchant caravans with their heavy loads were. It took them over two weeks to get though the Labyrinth and that was if nothing delayed them.

At Forgotten Springs, Kharagal returned her chocobo to the local Chocobokeep and attuned to the atheryte. She'd never have to make that particular journey again! Asking around town about Y'mhitra revealed that one of the local merchants saw her teleporting in a few days ago. Upon finding out that Kharagal was working with the Sons of Saint Coinach, the merchant gave her directions to Byregot's Strike. The merchant also asked if Kharagal could take a lump of resin to Mumugoi, one of the researchers at the Strike. Apparently there was something very weird about it and the merchant was not going to sell it until she knew what it actually was. Kharagal agreed, not only because she was promised pay, but because a desert community was the kind of place that ran on people's reputations and she did not want to start out with a bad one.

After a day's rest in the oasis town, Kharagal left for Byegot's Strike on foot. It felt good to be traveling though a proper desert again.

* * *

Four days out of Forgotten Springs, Kharagal walked into Bryegot's Strike and knocked on the door of the building next to it. There was a clatter from inside, like several things had been knocked off a table and after a moment a male lalafell opened the door. "Oh! It's you! Y'mhitra!" he called over his shoulder, "she's here!" He opened the door wider. "Come on in, Kharagal. You must be melting out there!"

Kharagal followed the lalafell into a room filled with tables with lots of inkwells, sheets of paper and Allagan artifacts on top of them. On the floor next to one of the tables was a jumble of allagan artifacts that had obviously fallen. "Oh don't worry," the lalafell said when Kharagal paused to pick the artifacts up. "One of the best parts about studying Allagan artifacts is that they're ridiculously durable and very hard to break on accident. You'd need a-"

"Talking our guest's ear off already, Mumugoi?" Y'mhitra's teasing voice came from where she was coming up from the basement. She had a large glass of water in one hand which she gave to a grateful Kharagal.

"Oh like you haven't done that to her already," Mumugoi chuckled. "I'm just making up for lost ground."

Y'mhitra laughed at that. "Well something tells me Kharagal will be talking both our ears off before long." She turned to Kharagal. "Speaking of which, how was your trip? I did not expect you to get here this quickly."

Kharagal leaned against a table and unwound the length of fabric over her nose and mouth to take a sip of water. "It certainly felt long. I didn't know canyons could take that long to traverse. At least it was easy past Forgotten Springs; the sandworms here aren't on fire. But the anglers... Wavekin are not supposed to swim though sand like they do though water! No matter how good they taste." She took another gulp of water.

Y'mhitra giggled before growing serious. "One of the effects of the calamity I'm afraid. I think the naturalists said the entire species' atherial balance was over-aspected towards wind or something."

Kharagal gaped at her. "An entire species..." She took another drink of water. "Every time I think I know the extent of the calamity something more bizarre comes up." The three of them laughed at that.

"So, do you want to do the Austerities soon?" Y'mhitra asked once they had all calmed down.

Kharagal sipped at her water. "Let's go in a few hours. I could use a break and it'll be cooler then anyway."

"There's some beds downstairs if you need some rest," said Mumugoi.

"That sounds great." Kharagal yawned. She'd been walking for most of the day and was not in the mood to do experimental spellwork just yet. She was halfway downstairs to the living area when she remembered something. "Oh wait! Mumugoi, one of the merchants in Forgotten Springs wanted you to take a look at this." Kharagal pulled the lump of resin out of a pouch and handed it to the lalafell. "She said there was something weird about it."

Mumugoi took the resin and put it on a table. "Thanks for bringing it over. Here's your payment." He handed over a few Allagan Silver Pieces to Kharagal and snickered, "I'd give you gil, but we have more genuine Allagan currency lying around here then we do normal money at this point."

She laughed with him as she went downstairs. Allagan Pieces were certainly lighter then carrying around the few thousand pieces of gil he would have otherwise given her. It was a good mood to fall asleep to.

* * *

At sundown, Kharagal and Y'mhitra walked west of Byregot's Strike. Y'mhitra stopped when they got to an area free of smoke bombs. "I think this is good enough."

Kharagal looked around and saw nothing that would be a major distraction. "Looks like it." She took a deep breath. "So, just to make sure, the Austerities just require me to shift my aether as close to the aether around us and an egi comes out?" 

"Yep!" Y'mhitra smiled. "Although... the texts say that the egi will be hostile. I'll stand guard and make sure it's not too bad for you." She unsheathed her wand and stood opposite Kharagal leaving a few feet of space between them.

"Alright then. Here goes nothing." Kharagal closed her eyes and felt the aether around her. The Sagolii Desert was hot and dry, the heat sapping the strength out of everything living but the hardiest of plants and animals. What did survive was stronger then it would be otherwise. Kharagal smiled softly to herself; it felt like home.

The sense of fire memorized, she turned her aether-sense on her own aura and began shifting its elemental balance to better match the fire aether around her. Lightning aether sparked into fire, while earth aether liquefied into lava. Wind aether whipped the fire up and ice aether melted into water aether which boiled away. When the entirety of her aether felt like a tongue of living fire, Kharagal felt a piece of it being pulled away from her by something outside of herself. She felt along the pulling sensation and was surprised to find it originated from the the soul stone Y'mhitra had given her. Somehow, the soul stone was splitting off some of the fire aether from Kharagal which let the fire aether follow its own structure instead of the structure of Kharagal's aether.

Kharagal gulped when she saw the structure the fire aether was forming. It was very familiar. Ifrit had created such a structure out of aether in the Bowl of Embers. Now that Kharagal was looking at the structure from the outside in, it was obvious it was similar to the form fire took in a smith's furnace, only it was more perfect then that could ever be. If the Bowl of Embers had held a furnace, then Kharagal and the rest of the Warriors of Light had been the metal in the furnace and Ifrit himself had been the hammer and anvil. _Well that explains a lot. No wonder people say Ifrit Tempers people._

It was then that Kharagal noticed the flow of aether to the soul stone had dwindled to nothing and the Ifrit-structure was nearly finished. In panic, she stopped concentrating on shifting her elemental balance and opened her eyes. Before her was a fire aether construct, leaking aether, that looked like a simplified from of Ifrit.

"Subdue it!" Y'mhitra shouted as the Ifrit-Egi made a lunge for Kharagal. Y'mhitra knocked it back with a Water spell.

Kharagal reflexively cast Miasma and Bio II at the egi, thinking quickly. _How am I supposed to do that?_ The Ifrit-Egi was aether; physically subduing it wouldn't work. On the other hand, the idea of possibly controlling something else's aether was wrong on so many levels, Kharagal was sure that wasn't the answer either.

But there was no time to think of one; the air and sand were now as hot as they were at midday and fire sprites were gathering in droves. Kharagal had her hands full with casting Ruin spells and Energy Drain while Y'mhitra healed her and conjured sandstone boulders. The fire sprites had been thinned considerably, but the Ifrit-Egi showed no sign of standing down. If anything, it pushed the attack even harder. The same nail from the fight against the actual primal sprouted out of the ground and the heat climbed even higher. Kharagal was sure it wasn't her imagination that the Ifrit-Egi's attacks were hurting more. She cast the version of Miasma and Bio II she had cast on the sprites at the nail and hoped that would take effect. Then she went back to keeping the Ifrit-Egi occupied.

It turned out the Trancendent version of Miasma and Bio II did work on the nail. The nail disintegrated, but the aether it was made out of flowed into Kharagal instead of back into the Ifrit-Egi. Kharagal flinched as the very familiar aether became a part of her again. _Wait, this is my aether. How can it be using my aether against me?_ She defeated the last fire sprite before the answer came to her. _Nhaama's Horns! The Ifrit-Egi is made out of my aether. This is my aether we're fighting against. It might not be structured like it normally is but that is my aether. So it's okay for me to control it._

With that in mind, Kharagal began looking for the link between her aether and the Ifrit-Egi. It was a lot harder now that her aether's elemental balance wasn't aspected towards fire. She switched to feeling at the Ifrit-Egi and had a lot more luck there; a stream of aether flowed into the Ifrit-Egi from her. Kharagal backtracked along it to herself. The stream was centered around and influenced by a bit of fire aether that was certainly not structured like Kharagal's aether. It was the structure of Ifrit. _This must be the aether that Ifrit left behind when he died._ Oh a whim, Kharagal poked it.

 _Oh!_ she gasped as foreign longing filled her. The bit of Ifrit-aether in her needed something. Not fuel, pure fire aether had no need for fuel to sustain itself, but something to purify, to refine, to temper. Its purpose was to strengthen through adversity and if that failed, burn the dross down to nothing. It wasn't its fault that most beings couldn't withstand it; they should have been stronger before setting themselves against it!

Kharagal shook herself free of the alien mentality. It was just a bit of aether that hadn't been her own aether to start with. Now it was hers and she'd had control over her own aether for years. That would not change now. _Stay down!_ she projected at the Ifrit-Egi as she flung a Ruin spell at it. _Your aether's mine and I'll do what I want with it._ Contain it, study it, fight with it, all of those were options.

The Ifrit aether flickered at that. Fighting was just a way to see if something was strong or not and, it smugly pointed out, Kharagal was strong because she was always sharpening herself against something. It didn't need to be a physical fight either. In fact, most of the fighting Ifrit did wasn't physical at all. If Kharagal wanted to use it to become strong then it was happy to let her have control!

At that, the Ifrit-Egi stopped fighting and stopped leaking aether. Kharagal let out the breath she'd been holding and collapsed in the sand in relief. Y'mhitra ran over to her to see what had happened only to find Kharagal laughing. "Y'mhitra," she made out, "it works!"

Y'mhitra laughed with her. "I can not believe it! You actually did it. So was our theory about the soul stone correct?"

"Yep!" Kharagal rolled onto her knees and began tracing the Ifrit geometry in the sand. Old habits died hard. "It somehow pulls out the form the primal's aether takes and remakes it outside of the summoner with their own aether." She looked up at Y'mhitra. "I think it needs to know the difference between the summoner's and the primal's aether and if the summoner's aether isn't of the same elemental balance as the primal's is, then it can't compare them to know which form is which." Now that Kharagal had the Ifrit-geometry traced out in the sand in front of her, she started copying it into her spellbook. "Once the summoner has the geometry and has subdued the egi, it can be cast like any normal arcane spell. The problem is getting it in the first place."

Y'mhitra looked from the Ifrit-Egi to Kharagal. "That is most impressive! It certainly sounds plausible." She squinted at the geometry traced in the sand. "And if this is what an Egi-geometry looks like, then no wonder all those advanced summoner spells are so difficult. I am sure they are easier then this!"

"It helps that I only have to cast this whenever I want Ifrit-Egi to be summoned, so I'll be able to take my time getting it right." Kharagal shut her spell book and started smudging the geometry drawn in the sand. "Casting it fast would make it much more complicated."

"Well, we should have plenty of time for you to become familiar with the egi." Y'mhitra knelt down and helped Kharagal erase the geometry. Soon it was if the geometry had never been there to begin with. "Speaking of which, we figured out why it is called an egi. Egi roughly translates to "pure" or "the essence of"." She laughed to herself. "I can not see how an egi could be purer then the primal it is based on."

"I can't imagined that either," Kharagal shrugged and tried not to think about how the bit of Ifrit-aether in her was both similar and different compared to the actual primal. She yawned. Now that the ritual was over and the geometry recorded, she could feel the beginnings of aether exhaustion. "I think I'm done here, Y'mhitra, I need to sleep."

Y'mhitra got to her feet and stretched. "That sounds good, but I want a bath first. And the Canopy has amazing baths."

Kharagal smiled. "That does sound good." She got up too and both of them gathered up what few things they had. "I'm assuming we'll go over exactly what happened here tomorrow?"

"Of course." Y'mhitra giggled. "The Sons are going to want to know everything. See you then!" She waved and teleported away into the sunset.

Once Y'mhitra was gone, Kharagal got out her spellbook again and looked from the Ifrit-geometry written in it to the egi by her side. They were clearly the same geometry and Kharagal knew she only had that geometry because it got stuck in her when Ifrit died. _No, not died,_ Kharagal remembered. _Just not in the corporeal realm._ Which implied Ifrit still had to be somewhere. She thought of the cliffs of Zanr'ak, the land where Ifrit was said to have first been summoned. _What would happen if I looked for Ifrit's geometry outside of my own aether?_

She shrugged to herself and tucked the thought away for later. That was a project for another day. Right now, a bath and sleep was a teleport away and she intended to take advantage of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figuring out what goes on in the Austerities even though that's never described in-game? Not that hard.
> 
> Figuring out how long it should take to get to Forgotten Springs from Ul'dah before attuning to its atheryte? Hard. Let's just say research into travel times of the Roman Empire (someone made what is essentially a Google Maps of it) and making my own version of the Eorzea World Map with re-drawn Zone Maps on it was involved. Because there's absolutely no way the Zone Maps are correct given what the World Map looks like...


	3. The Eikon

Two days later, Kharagal teleported back to Forgotten Springs. There was one more thing she wanted to experiment with before she started testing out Ifrit-Egi in earnest and she was pretty sure she had to do it in Zanr'ak. She decided she'd gotten close enough when after two days of traveling north, the cliffs of Zanr'ak began jutting out of the Sagolii Dessert and stopped by one of the cliff faces that faced away from Zanr'ak. There she made camp and went over the data she'd gathered one last time.

She pulled out the old leather grimoire she had converted into a research journal of sorts and made sure the facts she'd collected from the Scions about primals fit with what how summoning arts interacted with them. On paper at least, they did. Now it was time to see how far she could push those facts.

Like she had in the Austerity, Kharagal felt out at the aether around her. Instead of tuning her aether to the land's, Kharagal pulled up Ifrit's geometry in her mind's eye and tried to see if she could find a piece of aether in the land that matched Ifrit's aether. What she saw almost broke her concentration. _Bardam's Spear! It's huge._ Encompassing all of Zanr'ak was Ifrit's geometry. Or at least, she thought it did. The geometry faded off past the range of her mental senses to the north without showing any signs of distorting. To the south, the geometry fractured into formless fire aether. Kharagal herself was in one of the boarder regions of the geometry. _No wonder the Amalj'aa think Zanr'ak is sacred._

It was then what she was really seeing hit her. _This is not good._ One of the overarching themes of Xalea legends about interacting with the beings of the aetherial plane was that if a mortal was aware of them then they were aware of the mortal. When Ifrit had been in the corporeal realm, everyone could see him and vice-versa. Now that he was back in the aetherial realm, it was better not to get his attention.

Before Kharagal could stop concentrating on the aether around her, a deep voice crackled out of the aether of Zanr'ak along with a rush of oppressive heat. _Well, this is a surprise! I usually have to search far and wide for those who can truly withstand my flame, but here comes one who has already proven they can face my strength. What do you seek of me?_

_Nothing._ Kharagal was hyper-aware that here in the aether, Ifrit's strength wasn't limited by the amount of aether he had access to. I just wanted to see if an idea would work or not.

_Ah._ Ifrit's fire flickered closer. _So you wished to see if your idea could withstand the fires of implementation. Did it?_

Kharagal blinked. That sounded more like the bit of Ifrit-aether in her then the primal she and everyone else had fought. Maybe this aetherial Ifrit liked making things other then itself strong too. _A little too well, I think. I didn't mean to actually find you. I wanted to see if I could find a primal's aether in the world if I knew the geometry of it already._

Ifrit laughed around Kharagal in a scattering of sparks. _So your idea is a strong one. That is good. Listen closely. You said you can know what a primal's aether looks like. If you know what to look for in the atherial realm, you will find me and my kind everywhere there is aether that looks like us. We are beings of aetherial realm and corporeal realities such as distance matter little to us when we are in our native realm._

Kharagal stared at Ifrit. _Why are you telling me this?_

Ifrit snorted out a plume of smoke. _It has been long since I have rewarded one who has honestly earned their strength. And there are very few souls as strong as yours._

_What do you mean by that?_

The fire stopped flickering for a moment and then flared back to life. _You do not know? The Source of Light does not make gaps in the walls of the souls of weak individuals. Even though another's aether could never fill your soul, it was still you and your companions' strength that broke my hold on the corporeal realm and it takes no small amount of strength to accomplish that._ Ifrit's voice was growing fainter. _Just know that if we meet again in the corporeal realm, I will be sure to use more of my power. Once the alloy has been proven pure, there is still the need to sharpen it._ The heat rolled back, signaling Ifrit's attention was elsewhere.

Kharagal wasted no time in yanking her concentration out of the ather before anything else could happen. She became aware of her body all at once and lost her balance, almost cracking her head on the ground before she caught herself.

"Kharagal," she told herself as she struggled to her feet, "this is the kind of thing Dad said would get you killed if you poked it." _I am so lucky nothing worse happened. Nothing worse then getting a primal's attention anyway._ She quickly gathered up the remains of her campsite and teleported back to Limsa Lominsa. Kharagal did not want to stay any longer then she had to in what was clearly Ifrit's territory.

* * *

After shaking off the shock of traveling from a desert to an ocean in a matter of seconds, Kharagal sent herself though Limsa's aethernet to Mist where her best friend Carmen and her boyfriend, Alex had a house. They had given her a standing invitation to use one of their spare rooms if she ever needed a place to stay. It turned out neither of them were there, which wasn't unusual. When they weren't working with the Scions, Carmen was usually out on Rouge's Guild business and Alex helped the Adventurer's Guild. Kharagal took advantage of the empty house and helped herself to a bath and food from the kitchen before curling up with a detailed analysis of Bio spells in her room. It made for nice light reading.

Several hour later, she was interrupted by Carmen. "So, you're back," said the rouge. Kharagal looked up and saw Carmen leaning against the door frame, sharpening her fingernails with a knife. "Want to go with me to Naldiq & Vymelli's?" said Carmen. "I need to commission some custom daggers."

"Yeah, that sounds great," said Kharagal. Doing something as mundane as ordering daggers with Carmen sounded good after all the esoteric things she'd been up to for the past few days. She put the different variations of the Bloodborn version of Bio II she had been working on and the two women teleported to Limsa. 

When they got there, they skipped the aethernet in lieu of walking down Hawker's Ally. "Can't believe I'm saying this, but it feels so good not to not be walkin' around invisible," said Carmen. "This last week was crazy for even me."

Kharagal laughed. "Define crazy." Running into a defeated primal while feeling out aether was hard to beat.

"Well..." Carmen started winding her short honey-blond hair around her finger. "Jacke got word that somethin' weird was goin' on down in Wineport. Turns out we have Domen ninja in Raincatcher Gully. They're tryin' to find another ninja that betrayed them to the Empire."

"Did they show you any of their magic?" Kharagal joked. Confederate and Hingan stories featured ninja with the most outlandish powers, from making clones of themselves to summoning fire-breathing frogs out of thin air.

"Even better; they're teachin' it to me." Carmen's face was all smiles. 

Kharagal stared at her. "Wait, they really can do magic?"

Carmen laughed. "Don' know if it's magic like we know it; you'd be a better judge o' that. But I can tell you I can summon a shuriken out o' thin air and throw it at someone for some real damage."

"I'll believe it when I see it." Creating effects out of aether was one thing, it was a simple energy conversion (conceptually anyway). Creating objects would be something else entirely. If such a thing existed of course.

"Fair enough." Carmen elbowed Kharagal. "And what about you? You've been out o' contact for half a month. I know you've been up to somethin'."

"Well, I've been..." Kharagal stopped at that and thought. There was being stupid and then there was being really stupid. Mentioning primals in the middle of Limsa Lominsa was being really stupid. "I'll tell you what I've learned when you show me that shuriken you can summon."

"Don' think I'll believe you?" Carmen teased.

"No, it's just the kind of thing that's really easy to take the wrong way if you don't know enough about it." Kharagal gestured at the busy marketplace around them.

Carmen nodded. "Got it, but you are goin' to tell me later." She gave Kharagal her I-know-where-you-sleep look. Kharagal laughed at it and Carmen joined in with her. They spent the rest of the trip to the Maldiq & Vymelli's gossiping about the latest hauls to come into Limasa whether they came through Melven's Gate or not.

The smithy was warm and loud with the clang and taste of metal in the air. Kharagal leaned against a wall while Carmen talked with one of the smiths about the pair of steel daggers she was commissioning. Out of curiosity, Khargal felt the aether around her. There was the water aether of the sea rolling beneath her, wind aether whipping around the spires above her and and around her in the smithy itself was fire aether shaped like... _What are you doing here?!?_

_I told you distance mattered little to us._ Ifrit's voice was a lazy smolder out of the main furnace. _And this forge is one of the best I know of. It would be more difficult for me not to be here._

"You okay?" Carmen lightly shook Kharagal's shoulder. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Kharagal shook her head to clear it. What was she supposed to say? That Brithael and H'naanza kept such a good forge that Ifrit basked in its aether when he wasn't summoned? "I... I'm fine. I just spaced out." 

Carmen narrowed her eyes at Kharagal in her I-know-when-things-aren't-adding-up look. "Guess that means we'll be goin' back to the house 'stead of stayin' in Limsa late?"

"Yeah, that would be a good idea." Carmen probably really wanted an explanation now. It would be better to get it over with sooner rather then later. It also meant Kharagal would more then likely get to see how Carmen did that shuriken trick of hers.

When they left, Khargal gave the furnace one last look. Seeing Ifrit in it had been a a shock. On further review it really shouldn't have been. If Ifrit was shaped like a furnace, then that was where he would naturally turn up. _Well, not in every furnace... He said this one was one of the best forges, so that means there's forges that aren't as good. So he's probably not in those. Wait... If Ifrit's in furnaces because he's shaped like one and there's multiple primals... what are they usually in when they aren't summoned?_

"I know that look," Carmen said. They were almost to the atheryte plaza. "What'd you figure out this time?"

"Why I want to send primals to the Lifestream." It was true. Not only was the Lifestream where they were supposed to be, but it was the only way to get their aether for the Austerity ritual.

"Other then them tryin' to temper us?" Carmen raised an eyebrow at that.

Kharagal nodded. "Even if they didn't try tempering people, I'd still want to send them on." At Carmen's look she added, "It's related to the other thing I'll tell you about."

"I'll be waitin' on that," Carmen said and used the athernet to travel to the residential district.

_What is it with rouges and dramatic exits?_ Kharagal laughed to herself and reached for the aethernet. It was time to figure out what she was going to tell people about Ifrit-Egi. At least she was starting with her best friend who understood that some things didn't need to be shared with everyone. Hopefully Carmen could help her figure out what she didn't have to tell everyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In both 1.0 and 2.0, Ifrit knows that there's primals other then him in existence and that there's some people he can't temper because Hydalean is messing with them. Given that it is canon that primals are in the aetherial sea when they aren't summoned, I've got headcanon that's where he learned all that stuff. 
> 
> It's a known fact that the desire of the people summoning a primal has an effect on how the primal behaves. Which is the canon reason why the primals behave differently in 1.0 vs 2.0. Interestingly, several of the primals behave counter to how the myths about them say they should act...


End file.
